Saturday and Sunday June 24-25 , 10-4, all materials provided.

A hands-on workshop limited to 6 participants, $200.

Registration and more information: workshop@saengerporcelain.com

If you have an interest in plaster mold making, in creating original forms – models – in plaster, and in adding colored clay slips to your work, then please join me in the studio for a two day workshop that will introduce the basics of each of these three areas. Participants will make plaster models, a two piece plaster mold, and/or a hump/drape mold, and learn about slip coloring and manipulation. Whether one sculpts, hand builds, throws on a wheel, or casts clay, this workshop will offer new perspectives for you and your work.

My Journey…

The idea that I could spend as much time as I wanted to spend exacting the lines and the curves of a form attracted me to modeling in plaster. It is a material soft enough to easily sculpt with one’s hand and a wet piece of  sandpaper, or with hand tools. It is versatile; forming can be subtractive by carving or sanding, and forming can be additive, plaster adheres to plaster, forms can be built up or reduced down. One can take as much time as one needs to take designing in plaster, which was contrary to my early experience in clay work. When throwing I felt there was a clock counting down the time I could spend on a belly or a neck before the clay was overworked. The day I stopped throwing I felt energized, freed from the design limitations of spinning clay on a wheel, and marked the end of more than a decade of production throwing.

Tea For Two

Designing the original models in plaster allowed me to go beyond round. I was excited; I liked creating forms I could not hand-build or throw. I liked having the ability to reproduce forms exactly, and I liked having the capability to generate the reverse curves of a form. I eagerly explored fit-together design ideas with this new-to-me material at my disposal.

In my recent work I have been exploring colored slips, experimenting with methods of manipulating the physical characteristics of deflocculated slip, and the surfaces altered slips produce when be applied to a mold. The technique is not slip casting or hand-building, or press molding, the forming process has elements of each, the common thread is the use of plaster forms the clay is applied to.

Registration and more information: workshop@saengerporcelain.com

Best in Show
20th Strictly Functional Pottery National